Richard Biegenwald murdered six people in New Jersey from the 1950s to the 1980s and is suspected in two additional slayings. He was born on Staten Island on August 24, 1940 and grew up in Rockland County, New York. Biegenwald's father Albert was a violent alcoholic who beat him repeatedly. At only 5 years old, Richard set fire to the family home and was committed to a mental health facility. He was drinking and gambling by the 3rd grade and was treated with electroshock therapy at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, afterwards the State Training School for Boys in Warwick where he was accused of theft and inciting other inmates to escape. While visiting his parents back home, Richard stole money and at age 11 set himself on fire. He was returned to his mother Sally's custody at age 15--by this point she'd divorced her husband and was living on Staten Island. He finished the 8th grade at the age of 16 and dropped out a few weeks into high school.
Biegenwald then left home and moved to distant Tennessee where he lived during 1957-58 and was arrested after stealing a car in Nashville and driving it to Kentucky, but since he was still underage no charges were filed. He returned home to the New York City area soon afterwards where his crimes were about to get a lot more serious. On December 18, 1958, Biegenwald stole another car in Staten Island and drove it to Bayonne, New Jersey where he and an accomplice, Frank Spardoff, robbed a delicatessen, and shot and fatally wounded the owner Steve Sladowski, 47, who was also an assistant municipal attorney for the city. He then hightailed it out of the Garden State but was caught only two days later in Salisbury, Maryland after state troopers flagged him down for speeding. Biegenwald fired a shotgun at the troopers, wounding one before being apprehended. Taken back to New Jersey, he was sentenced to life in prison for armed robbery and second degree murder.He served 16 years and was paroled in 1975. For a while after getting out of prison, Biegenwald kept a low profile, mostly working odd jobs and in 1979 began dating an attractive 16 year old named Dianne Merseles who lived next to his mother. Dianne was an honor roll student at school and her parents were horrified to learn that she was seeing an ex-con old enough to be her father. Biegenwald had failed to report to his parole officer since summer 1977 and was also suspected in a rape. He was arrested in Brooklyn on June 8, 1980 for the rape accusation and his fiancee married him while he was in county lockup. However, the victim was unable to identify him in a police lineup so the rape charges were dropped. Biegenwald still served six months for parole violation. He was released in December and with his wife moved into an Asbury Park, New Jersey apartment.
On January 4, 1983, eighteen year old Anna Olesiewicz was found in some woods behind an Ocean Township Burger King by some children playing back there, shot four times in the head, but she was fully clothed and wasn't raped. Olesiewicz had last been seen August 28, 1982 when she went down to the boardwalk and didn't come back. A female friend of Biegenwald's wife told police she believed he did it. As proof, she claimed she'd been to the boardwalk with him a few times scouting out potential victims and that he'd once shown her a dead woman's body hidden in his garage and even gave her her ring as a present.Police surrounded Biegenwald's apartment on January 22, used a ruse to lure him outside, and arrested him. Also inside was Dherran Fitzgerald, 52, a friend that Biegenwalk had met in jail. Fitzgerald locked himself in a back room with weapons inside and refused to come out. Police threatened to shoot through the walls so he finally gave himself up. Inside the apartment was a large cache of weapons and narcotics, including pipe bombs, firearms of various types, including a machine gun, Rohypnol, chloral hydrate, marijuana, a live puff adder, venom-collecting apparatus, and floor plans for several area residences and businesses.
Fitzgerald told the same story about the dead woman in Biegenwald's garage. This victim was dumped behind the Burger King where Anna Olesiewicz was found, and he'd also helped transport another body to his mother's Staten Island home and bury it in the basement. While doing that, Fitzgerald said that he came across a different body Biegenwald had buried there some time earlier. Fitzgerald led police to three other bodies in addition to the two buried in Staten Island.As the investigation went on, police located a ninth victim, William Ward, who was buried in a shallow grave in Neptune City, New Jersey. Ward was a prison escapee whom Biegenwald had shot four or five times in the head and then disposed of at a cemetery nearby. Police only had enough evidence to charge Biegenwald with five counts of first degree murder. Fitzgerald reportedly decided to snitch on him out of anger that Biegenwald had killed his pet cat--he received two five year sentences for unlawful firearm possession and being an accomplice to a felony. All in all, Biegenwald had killed or was suspected of killing the following individuals since getting out of prison in 1975.
*John Petrone, a police informant and ex-con shot dead in June 1978 at an abandoned airfield in Flemington, New Jersey*Virginia Clayton, 17, stabbed to death September 8, 1982 and found three days later not far from where Petrone's body had been located*Maria Ciallella, 17, who went out to a Halloween party on Halloween night 1981 and was last seen walking along Route 88 towards her Brick, New Jersey home. A patrol officer saw the girl walking alone down the road and figured she needed a lift home, but in the meantime he had a traffic accident to respond to. The officer finished up that call and came back a short time later, but Ciallella was gone. It was a year and a half before anyone learned of her fate when her body, cut into three pieces, was found buried in Sally Biegenwald's backyard.*Debbie Osborne, 17, had disappeared from Point Pleasant on April 8, 1982. Her remains, stabbed to death, lay on top of Ciallella's.*Betsy Bacon, 17, disappeared November 20, 1982*William Ward, convicted drug dealer and prison escapee shot in the head by Biegenwald at his Asbury Park home in September 1982
Biegenwald was ultimately convicted of murdering Ciallella, Osborne, Olesiewicz, Ward, and Bacon. He plead guilty to three of them. The prosecution could not find a motive other than that he killed for the thrill of it. Biegenwald was sentenced to death. He appealed his conviction and managed to get the death sentence tossed and a re-trial, but the second trial in 1989 saw him sentenced to death once again. The state supreme court overturned his sentence in 1991 and he spent the rest of his life quietly in New Jersey State Prison, where he passed away from natural causes on March 10, 2008, a year after the Garden State formally abolished capital punishment.
>>18527211>>18527208so this is the heckin based wholesomearino 1950s /pol/ told me about
>>18527214>>18527211tf man. why couldn't boomers help themselves with killing people?
>>18527222>*John Petrone, a police informant and ex-con shot dead in June 1978 at an abandoned airfield in Flemington, New JerseyThis one there's a good chance he didn't kill him. A guy like this would have lots of people who'd want him dead.
>>18527222>*Maria Ciallella, 17, who went out to a Halloween party on Halloween night 1981 and was last seen walking along Route 88 towards her Brick, New Jersey home. A patrol officer saw the girl walking alone down the road and figured she needed a lift home, but in the meantime he had a traffic accident to respond to. The officer finished up that call and came back a short time later, but Ciallella was goneboy i sure hope he got fired for that blunder
>>18527211>He served 16 years and was paroled in 1975. For a while after getting out of prison, Biegenwald kept a low profile, mostly working odd jobs and in 1979 began dating an attractive 16 year old named Dianne Merseles who lived next to his mother. Dianne was an honor roll student at school and her parents were horrified to learn that she was seeing an ex-con old enough to be her father.tf was her problem? it's not even like she was white trash or from a poor broken home and she decides dating a late 30s guy who murdered someone was a good idea.
>>18527323you have a lot to learn about women, boy
>>18527211not the first or last case of a guy in the 70s who murdered someone, got out early for good behavior or some other such reason, and went 10x harder
>>18527218>Fitzgerald reportedly decided to snitch on him out of anger that Biegenwald had killed his pet catbit understandable
>Biegenwald's father Al was an alcoholic amputee who took out his frustration on his family. Spending much of his childhood in mental health care that involved electroshock therapy, being undressed and doused with cold water, and being forced to sleep on a table, he would urinate himself to stay warm. Richard dropped out of school at 16 as they did not teach the courses in crime that interested him. He was arrested in Kentucky in 1958 by FBI agents for interstate car theft after stealing a car in Nashville, but since he was only 17 he wasn't charged with anything and went back home to Staten Island, where he and a friend robbed and shot to death a deli owner and part-time DA named Stephen Sladowski in New Jersey. The duo were apprehended a short time later in Maryland after a shootout with police that got Biegenwald a life sentence. Prison did nothing but make him into a better criminal and he was paroled in 1975 for good conduct.>Biegenwald was said to have connections to organized crime and may have murdered prostitutes and dumped them in bodies of water. He was accused of a rape in New York City in 1980 but the victim failed to recognize him because he shaved his head, so no charges were pressed in the case. It is possible that Biegenwald murdered dozens more people than he was ever charged with.
this guy had a gift for cheating the system>gets out of a car theft charge because he's underage>murders some dude, wounds a cop in a shootout, gets out of prison in less than 20 years>gets out of a rape charge because the victim was unable to identify him>after getting finally put away for murdering several people gets his death sentence overturned on appeal>possibly responsible for dozens of unsolved murders in the New Jersey area but no real way to prove he did them
>>18527214They had a crazy scheme to coat pay phones with the snake venom so people would touch it and die. There were plans to assassinate government officials and other far out stuff in his house.
